I watched a Discovery documentary about this a few years ago - the process to reclaim the metals from computers and the like is so goddamn toxic China is the only country on earth that can do it cheaply because they contaminate a town for a few years and then move on to the next one. I remember they had an American company who collected e-waste on the record as saying it was cheaper to ship it to China and ship the final product back than it was to deal with environmental regulations in any western country. Then they showed video of Chinese rivers that were farking steel gray through and through because of contamination.

At some point China is going to run out of places to ruin. The year after that, your new tablet is going to cost 3 grand.

I've been learning circuit design and rather than go to Radio Shack and spend lots of money I collect old electronic stuff and strip it for usable parts and wire. A heat gun and an old putty knife will strip an old board very quickly. Then I have a pile of parts to sort while I'm watching TV and voila- endless resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, switches, pots and a bunch of other stuff that I hope to one day identify when I learn more. It's awesome to turn broken crap into annoying noise machines and weird blinky things.

Quantum Apostrophe:Nonsense. We're running out of resources on this mudball, what with tossing all our minerals into black holes. We MUST, as a *species*, start mining asteroids before we run out of like stuff !!!

lewismarktwo:Quantum Apostrophe: Nonsense. We're running out of resources on this mudball, what with tossing all our minerals into black holes. We MUST, as a *species*, start mining asteroids before we run out of like stuff !!!

Did 'space nutters' kill your family or something?

I used to *be* one. Then reality dawned on me, and kicked all my delusions square in the soft spot. We can't afford to gape slack-jawed at the romantic delusions of the past, we got shiat to do right here, right now.